Development and UX from Michael Mahemoff. Maker of Player FM. Previously: Google, BT, O'Reilly author. Also thesis papers.

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An Ajax Framework a Day!

Today’s Ajax framework is JsRia. Yesterday’s was ZK, with the Backbase entries updated too. In the past week, there were Smartclient, Ajax JSP Taglib, Ajax JSF Framework, Cajax. Here’s the diff. The week prior to that saw introduction of XOAD, Rialto, and Lotus Notes info.

Have the Ajax frameworks entered the enlightened age of singularity? (I’ve been listening to a lot of Ray Kurzweil podcasts lately, forgive me.) To some extent, yes, there is some pretty explosive growth here, because several of these frameworks really have been released in the past couple of weeks, as far as I can tell. In addition, many of the project owners and users have presumably become aware of the page, and seek to add their project or update my original description.

So I’m thinking the frameworks page needs to be split before it bursts at the seams, what do you reckon? I wish there was a way to keep them all on the same page, with a bit more Ajaxy dynamism, to let you manage and personalise things better. As I alluded to yesterday on Ajaxian, of all the Ajax projects being announced – wikis are somewhat lacking. Surprising to me, since it was one of the most obvious Ajax examples to me – one I mentioned in the original Ajax Podcast, and one of the first proof-of-concept demos I created for the patterns. One thing I’d like to see is wikis take more of a web service approach – let a thousand Ajax/Flash/Desktop wikipedia clients bloom. Sure, there are mashups now, but they’re mostly read-only, and require manual scraping. The idea I had with the Ajax Patterns Reader was to eventually let people leave feedback. There’s another demo – the portal, which grabs content from ajaxpatterns.org, and there will be a further demo coming soon. To do all that properly, I’ll likely create a web service to expose the wiki content as an RESTful API.

In closing off this tangent, here’s a question: How would it be creating a wiki from the ground up, with no UI? Just a collection of web services for managing content. I’ve found MoinMoin is more configurable and pluggable than most, but it still starts with the unnecessary premise that the UI lives in the same process as the content.

An Ajax Framework a Day!

Today’s Ajax framework is JsRia. Yesterday’s was ZK, with the Backbase entries updated too. In the past week, there were Smartclient, Ajax JSP Taglib, Ajax JSF Framework, Cajax. Here’s the diff. The week prior to that saw introduction of XOAD, Rialto, and Lotus Notes info.

Have the Ajax frameworks entered the enlightened age of singularity? (I’ve been listening to a lot of Ray Kurzweil podcasts lately, forgive me.) To some extent, yes, there is some pretty explosive growth here, because several of these frameworks really have been released in the past couple of weeks, as far as I can tell. In addition, many of the project owners and users have presumably become aware of the page, and seek to add their project or update my original description.

So I’m thinking the frameworks page needs to be split before it bursts at the seams, what do you reckon? I wish there was a way to keep them all on the same page, with a bit more Ajaxy dynamism, to let you manage and personalise things better. As I alluded to yesterday on Ajaxian, of all the Ajax projects being announced – wikis are somewhat lacking. Surprising to me, since it was one of the most obvious Ajax examples to me – one I mentioned in the original Ajax Podcast, and one of the first proof-of-concept demos I created for the patterns. One thing I’d like to see is wikis take more of a web service approach – let a thousand Ajax/Flash/Desktop wikipedia clients bloom. Sure, there are mashups now, but they’re mostly read-only, and require manual scraping. The idea I had with the Ajax Patterns Reader was to eventually let people leave feedback. There’s another demo – the portal, which grabs content from ajaxpatterns.org, and there will be a further demo coming soon. To do all that properly, I’ll likely create a web service to expose the wiki content as an RESTful API.

In closing off this tangent, here’s a question: How would it be creating a wiki from the ground up, with no UI? Just a collection of web services for managing content. I’ve found MoinMoin is more configurable and pluggable than most, but it still starts with the unnecessary premise that the UI lives in the same process as the content.

G’Day

Welcome to Michael Mahemoff's blog, soapboxing on software and the web since 2004. I'm presently using HTML5 and the web to make podcasts easier to share, play, and discover at Player FM. I've previously worked at Google and Osmosoft, and built the Ajax Patterns wiki and corresponding book, "Ajax Design Patterns" (O'Reilly 2006).
For avoidance of doubt, I'm not a female, nor ever have been to my knowledge. The title of this blog alludes to English As She Is Spoke, a book so profoundly flawed it reminded me of the maturity of the software industry when this blog began in 2004. I believe the industry has become more sophisticated since then, particularly the importance of UX.
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